Thursday, June 6, 2019 at 1:15PM 
As we wait for Season Two of Big Little Lies, which starts this Sunday, let’s look back at the first season and in particular Reese Witherspoon’s performance as Madeline Martha Mackenzie. What she does is perhaps something only she can accomplish. She’s is working on several levels to deliver a riveting, enthralling and funny performance...
Thursday, June 6, 2019 at 11:00AM Lots of new movies this weekend. Dark Phoenix and The Secret Life of Pets 2 are nationwide. The two highest profile limited releases were both reviewed by Murtada at Sundance earlier this year. They've finally arrived for the rest of us, so go see 'em!
Last Black Man in San Francisco (A24, platform release)
While watching The Last Black Man in San Francisco - a gorgeous, specific, and fantastical fable of a film with a decidedly assured tone - I kept thinking of Oprah Winfrey’s introduction of Precious star Gabourey Sidibe at the Oscars. “Where did that come from?”, “Where did you learn how to do that?” I was asking these questions of writer/director Joe Talbot and writer/actor Jimmie Fails. They had collaborated on a short film before, but this is their feature debut... READ THE FULL REVIEW
Late Night (Amazon Studios, select cities this weekend... nationwide next week)
Emma Thompson plays legendary talk show host Katherine Newbery (think Letterman, 2 decades younger, English and a woman but just as famous and revered) in the new comedy Late Night. Early in the film Newbery meets a male employee from the writers room who is asking for a raise because he recently had a baby. In two minutes Thompson eviscerates him, and all of the decades of sexism and inequality in the workplace. She likens having babies to having a drug problem that one can’t shake. The latter is an unexpected and illogical simile until, that is, you hear it coming out of Thompson’s mouth. The writing’s funny and sharp, and Thompson is on full-throttle hilarious commitment... READ THE FULL REVIEW
Wednesday, June 5, 2019 at 11:06PM by Murtada Elfadl and Nathaniel R
Index (53 minutes)
00:01 Drama Desk Awards (plus Tony buzz)
10:00 Rocketman w/ Taron Egerton, Jamie Bell, Bryce Dallas Howard
25:40 Olivia Wilde's Booksmart w/ Kaitlyn Dever & Beanie Feldstein
34:00 The thoroughly bizarre Diamantino
39:10 Octavia Spencer in the horror flick Ma (plus Missi Pyle!)
48:00 Randomness: summer movies, Nathaniel's bday, upcoming Smackdowns
Mentioned (Extra Credit Reading!)
• Rocketman vs Bohemian Rhapsody Vulture Quiz
• New Yorker Ma Essay by Doreen St. Félix
• TFE Nathaniel's Review of Rocketman
• TFE Murtada's interview with the Diamantino directors
You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Continue the conversations in the comments, won't you?
Wednesday, June 5, 2019 at 7:12PM by Nathaniel R
Chalamet & Fanning and Woody on the set of the ill-fated "A Rainy Day in New York"
For as long as we've been conscious of the movies, there's been a Woody Allen movie released every single year. That clockwork regularity ended with Wonder Wheel (2017). Amazon refused to release the completed picture A Rainy Day in New York which was meant for 2018 when the bad press kept mounting and some of that film's cast (Rebecca Hall and Timothée Chalamet, among them) disowned the film due to media pressure from the Farrow family's accusations against the director (unchanged since 1992 -- Woody was never officially charged after two separate investigations -- but revived very publicly/frequently since early 2014). The filmmaker and Amazon Studios are, last we heard, still in a pricey legal battle over their broken contract (even if you dislike Woody, one wonders what argument Amazon Studios could possibly come up with that's a winning one since they went into that contract with full knowledge of the accusations) but Woody has the greenlight from other sources for his 2020 picture, as yet untitled, which will begin filming in July...
Wednesday, June 5, 2019 at 6:12PM by Nathaniel R
Looking for summer reading to occupy your non-movie theater / beach time? The 31st Annual Lambda Literary Awards were held this monday for the best in LGBTQ writing. NYC performance icon MX Justin Vivian Bond (Can You Ever Forgive Me, Shortbus, Kiki & Herb) was the MC and we've listed the winners of their 24 regular categories after the jump. If you've read any of these books do tell if they'd make intriguing movies...